Crossing the line
How one Mexican teenager made it across the border.

By Arturo Perez, as told to Don Ray

'GET DOWN ," our guide whispered loudly. "La migra!"

We dove into the wet chaparral and tried to disappear. We had cursed the cold, pouring rain, but now it was our friend -- it made it harder for the Border Patrol agents to negotiate the muddy mountain roads, and harder for them to see us through their windows. The wheels of the green Ford Bronco splashed more mud on us. But they didn't see us.

When la migra was nearly out of sight, we heard shouts of "Get up! Run! Faster! Now!" Like platoons in an advancing army, groups of 7, 10, 15 started scrambling up the hill. Hundreds of them. They'd all been waiting for the safety of the rain.

There were seven in our group -- Francisco, the "coyote" whom we had paid to take us from Mexico to Los Angeles, the guide he had hired to shepherd us across the mountains, and five of us "pollos." We scrambled for more than two hours Tijuana across the mountains. Finally we made it to the railroad tracks and took refuge under some boxcars. But before we could even catch our breath, Francisco spotted an approaching Border Patrol Bronco and ordered us back up the steep, muddy hill from which we had just scrambled. "We'll have to wait until dark. It's too dangerous," he said.

We retraced our steps for more than an hour, until the rain stopped. We were thrilled to see the clear, night sky -- but Francisco shook his head. "Ahora, los moscos," he said -- the flies would be coming soon. He was talking about helicopters, not insects. He heard them before we could. He shouted us down into the bushes, warning us not to move and not to look up. "They can see your eyes," he said.

Francisco told us to stay put -- he had to leave us there for a while with the guide. At least a dozen times the bright spotlights from above turned night into day. He returned after more than an hour. The pollo from Peru complained that we were hungry, wet, and miserable.

Francisco told him we should be glad we were taking the $1,300 journey and not the $800 one. "It's snowing up where they are, and they're in really bad shape," he said.

We couldn't imagine them suffering much more than we had already suffered. Before we climbed the border fence at Tijuana, the coyote's people had held us like prisoners in a putrid shed behind a house. We were allowed to take only the clothes on our backs. We had all promised the coyote there would be someone on the north side with his $1,300 fee. We knew that if he didn't get the money, they'd take us back to Mexico.

It was my first attempt at crossing. I had waited for months for a Mexican passport and a U.S. visa. I'd already greased the palms of several Mexican officials, but they were just ripping me off. I was determined to begin my successful life in the United States. I had only 11 years to reach my goal -- to be a millionaire by the time I was 30.

All of the others in my group had tried and failed to cross before. One, a 24-year-old mother of two, had been living in the United States but had returned to Mexico to care for her sick mother. She was desperate to get back to her kids. This was her third attempt to make the return journey.

Long after midnight, we finally eluded "los moscos" and made it to a rain-slicked freeway. Francisco cautioned us to wait for his cue. "This is the most dangerous part," he said.

At his command, we raced across nine lanes of traffic to some thick bushes on the other side. We hid there for an hour, until a dark-colored van pulled to a stop on the shoulder. The doors opened, and a dozen or so pollos who had been hiding just up the freeway jumped in.

"It's not our ride," Francisco said, "but we're going to take it. Get in the van!"

There must have been 18 or 20 people in the van. The men lay down on the floor and then on top of each other like cordwood. The women and girls squeezed in on top.

We ended up at a tiny house with no furniture and no carpets -- just 50 or so people standing shoulder to shoulder. The men in charge shouted at us as if we were animals. Francisco eventually paid them for picking us up and had us get into awaiting cars.

They took us first to the apartment of a very strange Mexican woman who insisted she was being paid to house but not feed us. We slept on her floor -- wet, hungry, and exhausted. After dark, we set out to cross the Border Patrol checkpoint at Temecula.

Mountains make it difficult to travel north from California's southern border without passing Temecula or Camp Pendleton. But even at those two checkpoints, most cars are waved right through. They put all of us in a sedan -- three in the trunk, two on the floor in the back -- and we slipped right past.

We spent that night at another woman's apartment, in San Bernardino. She gave us a little rice and beans -- the first meal we'd had in five days.

The next morning someone drove me and another pollo to a fast-food restaurant and then to a convenience store where our contacts were waiting with the money. The driver took the money and left us there.

The television was playing in the house of my friends in East L.A. I watched in horror the images of at least seven dead pollos who had frozen to death in the unexpected snowstorm east of where we had crossed.

I said a prayer to God. I thanked him for helping me find the strength to make the crossing -- and for the extra $500 I had paid. As sure as I breathe, I know it saved my life.